Great Ambition
by Benjikun
Summary: Ino'lis the FOmarl makes her way to the final battle thinking about all she has done. Contains spoilers so read at your own risk.


A short story I decided to write about a game I used to have and loved. The moment in the storyline where this happens always brings tears to my eyes. I wrote most of this, the part at the very end is quoted from the game. I hope you find it to your taste.

* * *

As the young Force made her way through the ruins many Hunters from the Guild had fought through long ago, she recalled the traumatic explosion that had ended her loved one's life. The despair was seeping out of every pore, yet she steeled through her mission. She had asked the commander to be assigned, fully determined but also full of doubt. She knew she was the weakest of the team, yet she had to do this… to atone for what she had caused. She gritted her teeth as she remember how foolishly she had said yes to the suggestions of their enemy, stopped in her tracks, she looked around the vast room she was in, expecting one of those nightmarish creatures to appear… however, nothing greeted her in the shadows. Nothing… just emptiness in the living ancient spaceship. She looked around, the small insect-like living forms spewed out from the walls of the ship the only things she could see. Ino'lis held her wand tighter, expecting something to manifest itself in the shadows.

"Who am I kidding? There is no way I can make it…" she whispered to herself, hesitating for a moment, almost turning back and opening a portal to return to the base. But then that determination that had surged before came back. "No… I must go on… I owe this to Kranz…" she pressed on forward, the darkness swallowing her as she went deeper in the ship. In front of her a mostly organic door opened, and she saw the great hall sprawling before her, tall windows overgrown with unknown organic matter. She felt small, harmless in such an expanse of a room, but she took a deep breath, and advanced to one of the tall windows opposite of her and peered out of it. Behind the grating of the window a strange landscape unfolded, a distant light illuminated everything, there were growths sprouting from the ground but they looked unnatural, Ino'lis knew that was the way she had to go, where the photon flows intersect. She turned away from the window, and went further down the ship.

* * *

The silence inside the ship was overwhelming, Ino'lis was scared, but she had to go on. Even though she was alone, the silence in the ship was sometimes interrupted by organic noises from the ship, the distant sound of closing doors, squelching in each of her steps across the narrow corridors. These slight noises were unsettling, but what felt more oppressive to her was the silence… the unnatural silence. She wondered how many Hunters had lost their lives in this very place. She remembered the history that was taught to all of the citizens of Pioneer 2 awaiting a bright future in this planet, and she also remembered all that was revealed to her when joining the Guild. The cover ups about what had happened to Red Ring Rico. She stopped in her tracks before a great door almost completely made of organic matter. "Kranz surely is coming behind me… should I leave a message for him?" she asked out loud breaking the unnerving silence, she heard her own words echo through the hall. But then her mind replied… "What difference would it make? He died because of you… he doesn't need anything more from you." Tears slid down her face, and she wished for monsters to appear, to busy herself for a while, but she knew that wouldn't happen. She hadn't seen any monster during her whole course through these Ruins. "It doesn't matter if those distant steps I can hear belong to Kranz… for all I know, he's just a clone… not the person I used to know."

So she took a deep breath, and took a step forward to the unknown as she had been doing for this entire mission. The door opened with a nasty slurping sound, and the darkness swallowed her. She closed her eyes, and held her wand tighter. If this was a suicidal mission, she didn't care… she had lost everything that meant something to her. A few seconds after going in, she felt the door shut behind her. "That's it… It will all be over soon... and I may see the real Kranz again and explain everything..." She comforted herself in the middle of her sobs. She was all alone in the moist darkness. Her breathing became stiff and heavy. "Kranz… I hope it wasn't you who was following me all this way…" she trembled holding her wand, she felt weak, helpless. "I know you can't come back from the dead... but a clone of you is still a part of you my loved... so I shall help even that part of you to finish his mission." But as she said this, suddenly the air turned colder, and light shone on her shut eyelids.

* * *

Ino'lis opened her eyes, and found herself standing in the middle of the field she had seen back at the great room in the spaceship, she looked down at the ground before her. Now that she was standing on it she could feel it… sandlike, barren and devoid of the warmth of any welcoming land. She looked up at the rocks and alien spires around her, and then faced the bright photon mass before her. "This is it… I made it before him… I must go on and clear everything up before he arrives here, even if it costs me my life."

"What else can a monster like me do? Somebody who ended the life of whom she loved the most?"

And so she stepped forward, lifting her wand defiantly as she approached the light. Then it happened, a mangled red haired being manifested before her and slammed the gargantuan blade protruding from its arm on the ground. It had begun.

* * *

 _(No one cares about me. No one notices me. All I've_  
 _ever done, is mess up.)_  
 _(What should I have done?_  
 _I..._  
 _I...)_  
 _(But Kranz is alright._  
 _I'm glad... They said that_  
 _our technology saved him.)_  
 _Hehehehahaha!_  
 _(How could it be!?._  
 _He was blasted into bits._  
 _Nothing left... just bits...)_  
 _(How could he be "alright?")_  
 _(It can't... I don't see how_  
 _it can be true. But if_  
 _he's safe, then I'm happy.)_  
 _(As long as Kranz is safe...)_  
 _(I've heard it's dangerous here._  
 _That's why I asked._  
 _Thank you, Commander.)_  
 _(Kranz had been wanting_  
 _to come here.)_  
 _(I'm here first. I'll make_  
 _sure he's safe by helping_  
 _him from the shadows.)_  
 _(That's all someone like me_  
 _can do. Someone who killed_  
 _the one she loved most...)_


End file.
